Leesa® Review 2017

Disclosure: This site receives a payment from Leesa when you purchase a product using any links to that company in this review (or use my coupon code)

Leesa® was one of the first direct-to-consumer companies to come out, launching in late 2014. Since then, dozens of (and maybe even over a hundred) mattress companies have popped up shipping mattresses in boxes to customers. How does Leesa stack up now that almost 3 years have gone by?

The short version: When Leesa came out, I made it my primary mattress shortly after testing it and a few others. It is still very comfortable and I still use it as my primary mattress, despite having offers for free mattresses from dozens of companies. Even with all of the new competition, Leesa hits the perfect middle ground in my opinion. There are better mattresses, but at higher prices. There are cheaper mattress, but they’re lower quality. There are firmer and softer mattresses.

If you know exactly what you want, you can probably find another mattress that fits your exact requirements. If you’re not sure what you want, the Leesa is very likely to work for you at a reasonable price.

The Leesa Mattress

Here I’ll look at the construction, how it feels, the return policy, and the price.

Construction

The Leesa mattress is a 10 inch foam mattress that comes compressed shipped in a box. It uses a top layer called “Avena” which is quite similar in feel and functionality to latex. That layer is “convoluted,” meaning egg-crate-shaped, so it allows air flow to keep a more neutral temperature.

Underneath of that is a 2 inch layer of memory foam for comfort, and then it’s a 6 inch base of high resiliency poly foam for support.

The foam is reasonable quality. The memory foam layer is 3.0 pound density, which is the minimum I’d recommend for every night use. A lot of cheap Chinese foam mattresses you’ll find only use 2.5 pound, which is just not durable enough for every night use. More expensive mattresses tend to use 3.5 pound and up.

Overall, Leesa hits a nice middle ground between price and quality.

The mattress comes with a 10 year warranty against manufacturer’s defects. If the mattress sags an inch, for example, they’ll repair or replace the mattress. This doesn’t warranty against comfort, however. I’d expect that it should be comfortable for around ~7 years or so. I’ve had mine for about 3 years, and it still feels pretty close to new.

The mattress is made in the USA and is CertiPUR-US certified, which means it’s free from the harmful ingredients they test for.

This is a cutaway of the Leesa mattress as seen on their website. Layer 1 is the “convoluted” Avena foam. Layer 2 is the memory foam comfort layer. Layer 3 is the high resiliency poly foam support base.

How it feels

Perhaps more important is how the mattress feels.

The Leesa is a medium-firm mattress. It’s designed to hit roughly in the middle of the bell curve of how firm of a mattress most people need. On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is like the floor, and 10 is like a marshmallow, this mattress is around a 3.5. If you’ve been in a mattress store, it’s similar to what a lot of places would call “luxury firm” or “cushion firm.”

Even though the Leesa is an all-foam mattress, it does NOT get that “stuck-in” feeling that some memory foam mattresses have. If you’ve tried a Tempurpedic, for example, and hated how slow the response was, the Leesa does not have that at all. It is quite bouncy on the surface, due to the Avena foam.

This level of firmness is going to be good for a big chunk of the population. However, if you want a soft, fluffy mattress, this isn’t it. If you want an ultra-firm mattress with no give at all, this isn’t that either.

All that said, of the key features about Leesa is that they have a free return policy, so you don’t have to just take my word for how it feels. You can try it out for yourself without risking being stuck with the wrong mattress.

Return policy

The only reason I feel comfortable recommending the purchase of any mattress online without being able to try it first is a free return policy.

With Leesa, you’re able to try the mattress out for 100 days, and if you’re not happy, they will set up a removal for free and give a full refund. There’s really no catch to it. This is a risk-free purchase. (Small caveat to that: Alaska and Hawaii have to pay $100 to return it. But for the continental US, it’s free).

They do request that you keep the mattress for at least 30 days to break in the mattress. (When I first got my Leesa, I thought it might be a little too hard, but after about 2 months it was fully broken in and felt perfect. It’s kind of like breaking in a new pair of shoes.)

(Side note: this is one reason I stick to recommending more established companies, like Leesa. There’s more of a risk that a smaller company might not be around if you want to return the mattress. Leesa is one of the largest and most established in this space).

Price

The Leesa ranges from $525 in a twin to $1195 in a king. The queen size, which is the most popular mattress size, is $995. (You can save $125 with coupon code MATTRESSNERD at checkout, bringing the queen price down to $870).

This is a very reasonable price for a good quality mattress. In a mattress store, a similar mattress will generally run you a couple hundred more. (For example, at the time of writing this. Serta has a firm mattress called Blue 100 which is 9.75 inches thick and is about $1100 for a queen mattress.)

This price is for just the mattress. If you need a boxspring (or foundation, as is the more common term these days; boxsprings no longer have springs in them, especially not for foam mattresses), it’ll run you a couple hundred dollars more. Leesa recently started selling a matching foundation on their site for $295 in a queen. That’s a bit higher than the cheapest one on Amazon, but roughly in line with a nice one you’d get from a mattress store. It’s designed to match the mattress and looks pretty sleek. Whether it’s worth the extra money to you is entirely up to you.

Other alternatives include putting it on a platform bed or an adjustable base. If you really want to go all-out, the adjustable base is a great way to go, but it’s significantly more expensive.

This is my second Leesa in my living room. It gets almost as much use as my king size. It’s shown on a West Elm daybed and the new Leesa pillow

What’s new with Leesa

Sapira

Leesa came out with a second mattress, an innerspring “hybrid” mattress, called Sapira. It’s actually even a little nicer than the Leesa, but it’s also more expensive. You can read my full Sapira review here. The summary is that it’s a slight upgrade to the Leesa for about $500 more depending on the size, so whether that’s worth it to you really depends on your personal budget.

The Sapira is a hybrid mattress that’s a bit of an upgrade from Leesa, but it’s also more expensive.

Accessories

Leesa now sells a few matching accessories to go along with their mattress: a pillow, blanket, and foundation.

Pillows

Leesa has two pillows on their site: A standard foam pillow and a “hybrid” pillow.

Leesa Pillow

The Leesa pillow is made of the same materials as the mattress. It’s made of Avena foam, which again feels a lot like latex (without actually being latex), and it even has the same cover.

The pillow is a little on the thin side, so it’s best for back sleepers and stomach sleepers. If you sleep on your side, it’ll work if your shoulders aren’t too broad. I have fairly broad shoulders and sleep on my side, and the pillow is just a little too thin for me. I instead use the hybrid pillow (described below).

The good news is that, like the mattress, the pillow also has a free trial period. If you don’t like it, you can send it back to them at no cost.

The Leesa pillow is made of the same materials as the Leesa mattress

The hybrid pillow

Leesa’s hybrid pillow is unlike any other I’ve seen. It has 3 layers:

One side is a down alternative fiber with quilted pockets to hold the filling in place

The other side is a gel foam pad which is cool to the touch

Inside is a removable “mini-pillow” that adjusts the overall thickness of the pillow

I use this pillow with the inside “mini-pillow” taken out, because it’s thick enough for me without it. I generally sleep on the down-alternative side, occasionally flipping it over to the other side if I want my pillow to feel cool to the touch.

It’s really a unique pillow.

Foundation

Leesa also has a foundation (aka boxspring, though it doesn’t use springs). The mattress needs to sit on a flat, rigid surface, and the Leesa foundation provides that. It seems to be quite easy to assemble and it matches the mattress. You no longer need to go buy a foundation separately like you did when Leesa first came out. (Though, you are still free to shop around. the Leesa and Sapira will work on any rigid foundation, or an adjustable base).

If you’re getting a foundation, you’ll need a frame for it to sit on. You may already have one; most frames are very durable. If you don’t, Leesa has one on their site too.

The assembled Leesa foundation as seen on their website. It uses no screws or power tools to put together. You just slip a few pins into place and unroll the top

Blanket

This was the first accessory they came out with. People loved the Leesa cover so much that they wanted it in a blanket version. Leesa even gives you a 30 day return window for the blanket.

Social responsibility

Leesa is a certified B corp, which means they “meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.”

Leesa has a program called “one-ten,” in which they donate 1 mattress to a charity (like homeless shelters) for every 10 they sell. According to their website, they have donated over 17,000 mattresses (as of the time of writing this article).

They have also partnered with the Arbor Day foundation to plant 1 tree for every mattress they sell.

In short, Leesa takes their responsibility to their community and the world seriously.

West Elm

Leesa has teamed up with West Elm to be their official mattress partner. You can test out the Leesa in any West Elm store before buying it. This is particularly convenient if you were getting a West Elm bedroom set anyway. The Leesa or Sapira will work on West Elm’s platform beds (and in fact, I’ve had a Leesa sitting on a West Elm daybed for years, as seen in a picture above in the article).

Conclusion

After all this time, the Leesa is still my favorite direct-to-consumer mattress. I’ve had dozens of opportunities to change my recommendation with all of these new mattress start-ups, but between the Leesa being very comfortable and them being one of the biggest and oldest companies in the space, I see no reason to change my mind.

(Side note: some companies have even offered me a lot of commission to write articles promoting their brand. I get paid a small commission if you buy a Leesa through my links in this article. Some other companies offered me a much higher rate to do the same for them, but I declined, because I didn’t trust their product. One was made in China and had a lot of customer complaints, for example, but they were offering me triple what Leesa was. I do not promote them. I only work with brands I trust).

If you want to avoid the hassle of mattress shopping in a store, and think you’ll like a medium-firm mattress, the Leesa is an excellent option that you’ll very likely be happy with. And if you’re not for some reason, they have a great customer service team and a free return policy.

MattressNerd Says

October 31, 2017 at
9:11 am

The Leesa will sleep cooler than a standard memory foam mattress, but it is not the coolest one out there. On one hand, they have a free return policy, so you can certainly try it out and return it if it sleeps too hot. On the other hand, an innerspring mattress will have more air flow and should sleep even cooler. If you want to stick with the same brand, Leesa has a mattress called the Sapira, as I mention in the article, and that is an innerspring. There are also some other brands that are designed to sleep cool.

Tanya Says

October 31, 2017 at
7:00 am

Looking for a semi firm mattress that is COOL. I am a side sleeper, I wait tables part time. My memory foam is hot and honestly I get up tired and hurting. My legs are achy and my back can be at times. This one seems like the closest to what I need to get a good nights sleep. Am I missing something?

MattressNerd Says

October 11, 2017 at
9:19 pm

Thanks for bringing that bug to my attention. The link has been fixed. I don't know what happened there.

Suzanne Says

October 11, 2017 at
7:32 am

Where is the Sapora review? I follow the link and it just has a date in May. Can you give me another link please.

MattressNerd Says

September 29, 2017 at
10:51 pm

Depends on the person. It's fairly firm, so if you're light and bony, you may feel pressure. If you're about average or heavier, it should contour enough. But everybody's body shape and weight distribution is different, so it's impossible to know for sure. That's where the free return policy comes in.